Roughly 18 months ago I came across Saudade, the debut album of a French atmospheric black metal band who call themselves Cepheide. Though commenting about only the album’s first advance track here, I found that it was very easy to get caught up in the music’s wrenching passion, and to get carried away as it rocketed toward a glorious crescendo. Its atmosphere was a mix of depressiveness and delirium, an experience both mortifying and majestic, with a swirling, intense, symphonic melody that glimmered and soared, and rising choral voices mixed with scalding rasps.

The album as a whole proved to be just as gripping, and so it was exciting to learn that Cepheide would be participating in a new split release, especially because the other band on the split, Time Lurker, had also proved through their 2017 self-titled debut album to be such a formidable new force. We’ve already paid attention to one of Time Lurker‘s new tracks on the split, and today we get to present Cepheide‘s contribution, a thoroughly engrossing song called “Lucide“, in advance of the split’s release by Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions on May 3rd.Continue reading »

This is the second part of today’s collection of new black and “blackened” metal (Part 1 is here). Even with a two-part article, I’ve still had to leave material behind, including a few full releases that I need more time to digest. I’m hoping I’ll get to those in the coming week.

There are some full releases included below as well. As is becoming typical, time constraints have prevented me from writing proper reviews, and instead I’m singling out individual tracks as a way of giving you a guide, and hopefully inducing you to explore further.

ARCKANUM

Four years after the last album, Arckanum has returned with a new one named Den Förstfödde (“The Firstborn” in English), but alas, Arckanum has made clear that this will be the final one in a career that dates back to 1993.Continue reading »